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 CHAPTER XI

The Half-penny Post. Education. Finance

Lord Dalhousie is also the father of cheap postage, I had almost said of the civilised Post Office, in India. We are assured by one of his contemporaries that, on Lord Dalhousie's arrival in India, the country was no further advanced in regard to postal facilities than it had been two centuries before, under Muhammadan rule. Indeed, the people were rather worse off, for we had made private letter-carrying penal, and yet levied such prohibitive rates on the public carriage of letters, as to practically place the Post Office beyond the means of the native population.

Lord Dalhousie appointed a Commission of three able civilians to enquire into the working of the Indian postal system. They found that the Post Office was a heavy drain upon the public revenues. The Station Doctor or some half-employed subaltern was usually the local post-master. The postage on a single letter amounted to three or four days' wages of a skilled native artisan. The subordinates in the country Post Offices were notoriously cor-